Boone Pickens: Fracking’s Long History Proves it’s Safe

March 26, 2012

Speaking at last week’s Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference, Boone Pickens, chairman of BP Energy Management and a Texas oil billionaire going way back, says if you want to see whether or not hydraulic fracturing is safe, all you have to do is look where it’s been actively used, underneath aquifers, for decades:

If you want to see the effects of fracking, take a look at what’s happened in the Great Plains region, says noted oilman T. Boone Pickens.

Fracking already takes place in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas — some below the surface of the Ogalalla aquifer, the largest underground freshwater reservoir in the United States — Pickens says.

Pickens, the chairman of BP Energy Management, said in a meeting with reporters that there have been no problems with fracking under the Ogalalla aquifer and the water hasn’t been contaminated.

“Now, the stuff you’re hearing is mostly coming out of Pennsylvania,” Pickens said, referring to the Marcellus shale formation in the eastern part of the U.S. But he cautioned anyone examining the issue to look deeper.

“Go where the history is,” he said. “You can get so much history down here [in the Great Plains region] it’s incredible.”*